After several months, a few million dollars, and plenty of feedback from the community, the new building for Cochrane Christian Academy (CCA) is ready to open their doors to students this coming school year.
Rocky View Schools (RVS) superintendent Greg Luterbach said he is excited to bring the new location to CCA students in the community when they return to class after the Labour Day long-weekend.
“We invested multiple millions of dollars into our renovation and we are ready to go,” Luterbach said. “We’re really excited for the students, staff, and families to be able to get in there and continue the good work that they already do.”
The building located on Powell St. was acquired by RVS in September 2022 from the Calgary Catholic School Division, shortly after the former occupant, Holy Spirit School, relocated to a new building in Fireside.
The aging building underwent a $2.8 million dollar restoration over the last year to welcome students for the 2023-24 school year. Luterbach said the renovations were extensive in order for the space to be up to the same standards of other RVS facilities.
“And I’m glad to say that it certainly is,” Luterbach argued. “We’ve done a major roof repair and replacement, painted inside and out, [we’ve done] landscaping, renovated one of the sets of washrooms, built an entirely new accessible washroom, classroom spaces all have new projectors and Wi-Fi, bulletin boards and white boards, and all the furniture has been all set up and moved in there.
“When you walk into the building, it truly does look like a typical RVS building and we’re super proud of that.”
Luterbach said the everyone involved in the project had their work cut out for them, adding they are in the last-minute crunch to have everything ready for the first day of school on Sept. 5.
“We’ve put all of our efforts to make it fantastic and most of that effort is by the CCA school administration, the learning assistants, [and] the office staff,” he said. “They’ve put in a lot if work and I’m really proud of that, and they will have an amazing school for kids and families.”
The RVS Board of Trustees’ decision to relocate CCA from the Mitford School campus to the Powell St. facility was made in April. While they acknowledged the decision was contentious among CCA families, trustees felt it was the option with the most pros and fewest cons, and would have the least impact on students in Cochrane overall by keeping CCA’s grade compositions intact.
With increasing numbers of students in Cochrane and high classroom occupancy rates affecting nearly all public schools in Cochrane, Luterbach said the addition of a new space that will accommodate up to 300 more students is certainly helpful.
But he stressed more is still needed to address the space crunch.
“As we’ve been saying all along, what we really need is additional classrooms, [and] additional schools built in Cochrane,” Luterbach said. “And the board of trustees have been working hard advocating the government for new schools in Cochrane, Airdrie, and Chestermere.’
He added this advocacy will be a continued mission for RVS, and encouraged Cochranites to get involved however they can to ensure it happens.
“So, when parents are seeing those things, we’d encourage them to reach out to their MLA, ministers, and be able to share their personal experiences around some of the impacts they’re seeing on their own children as a result of overcrowded schools,” Luterbach said. “But nonetheless, the reality is that teachers continue to do an amazing job in their classrooms.”
Although overcrowded classrooms are a struggle across many RVS schools and something the school division can’t fully control, Luterbach stressed that teachers and school administrators are all working hard to ensure that their spaces are still fantastic places to learn.
Overall, the superintendent said the new CCA building is a school of choice and RVS is proud to have it as part of the public school system in Cochrane.
“We know there’s been a demand for it,” Luterbach said. “It’s pretty much full across all the grades, and so it’s a program that’s existed in the community for years now and it’s appreciated in the community.”
“While it’s moved a little bit further within the Cochrane community, it’s still the same amazing CCA school it was before. And now the fact that they’ll have their own building to themselves will create some new opportunities, and it’ll be the staff working with those families to really make those opportunities blossom.”
